Stuck
by Sidoh1
Summary: Kenma gets stuck in a lift with an orange-haired stranger.


Kenma/Hinata AU. Warning for panic attacks.

* * *

Kenma regrets not taking the stairs as soon as an orange-haired blur dashes through the closing lift doors. If he didn't hate the prospect of having to spend an awkward thirty seconds or so in the dodgy old lift with a stranger, he'd probably be impressed with the guy's speed. His height makes him seem very young at first, but when he sneaks a quick glance, Kenma estimates that the guy is university age and probably only a bit younger than him. The boy's hand moves to press a button, but he grins and retracts it when he sees that the lift is already headed for the tenth floor.

Great.

As the lift starts moving, Kenma makes a point of looking down at his feet, trying to look as uninterested in his surroundings as humanly possible. He wishes he'd been playing a game when he got into the lift, but his 3DS is in his backpack and getting it out only for the lift ride would just make things awkward. In his peripheral vision, he can see the boy shoving his hands into his pockets and bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Hey, I noticed we're going to the same floor! Do you live here?"

Kenma looks up at the small screen above the door, which is showing that they've only just passed the second floor. "Yeah."

"Oh! Maybe you know my friend, then. He just moved in here a few weeks ago. His name is Kageyama."

"No, sorry." Kenma focuses intently on the speckled pattern on the carpet. He honestly doesn't know this Kageyama guy, or anyone else on his floor, for that matter. He makes a conscious effort to avoid his neighbours, or ignore them when he does run into them. But it does make sense now that the orange-haired boy doesn't live in the building, because somehow Kenma feels like he would have noticed him if he'd seen him in passing.

"Really? Tall guy, always looks grumpy?"

"I...I don't really know my neighbours." Fourth floor. Come on.

"Ah. Well, you're probably lucky you haven't dealt with his grumpy face yet. He's always glaring at me and calling me an idiot. He's a good guy though, he just shows it in odd ways. We have volleyball practice later and he's really good but I don't tell him that a lot because his head will swell up even more, you know? Oh! I'm Shouyou, what's your name?"

Kenma's throat feels dry. "K...Kenma."

"Nice to meet you Kenma! Are you…" Kenma never gets to hear Shouyou's question, because before he gets the chance to finish it, the lift stops with a jolt that almost causes Kenma to lose his balance.

They both glance up at the display. Sixth floor? The button isn't lit up in the way it would be if someone was waiting to get in, and the doors aren't opening. Puzzled, Kenma pushes the button that would open the doors under normal circumstances. Nothing happens. He tries the button for the tenth floor and some random others, but it seems useless.

"What's going on?" Shouyou's voice sounds about an octave higher than before. "Are we stuck between floors?"

Kenma shrugs. "I guess." He finds himself taking deep breaths, a strategy he employs almost automatically at this point after many years of dealing with panic attacks. They're always tied to social situations and he's not particularly claustrophobic, but this is still technically a social situation he quite literally can't escape from, and that bothers him more than being stuck in the lift to begin with. He reaches out to press the alarm button, but hesitates. Is that what you're supposed to do? What if the lift starts moving by itself again in a minute and he's making some kind of rescue team show up for nothing? But it doesn't look like the lift is going anywhere, so he reluctantly pushes the button and leans back against the wall.

"This is all Bakageyama's fault. I should have taken the stairs but I was late in the first place and he always yells at me when I'm late!" Shouyou starts to pace, as far as that's possible in the cramped lift. "Why is no one responding?"

"There's no speaker. It's pretty old. It probably just automatically sends someone."

"But how will we know if they're on their way? Wait, can we just get the doors open or something?" Kenma idly watches Shouyou try to pry the door open, but unsurprisingly, it won't budge. He lets out a frustrated noise and gives up, pressing the alarm button once more before he starts to pace again.

Kenma drops his backpack onto the floor and folds his arms over his chest. He wants to tell him to stop, that this is not going to help and that he's single-handedly going to make Kenma freak out too, but the words get stuck in his throat when he notices Shouyou's breathing. It's fast and shallow and all too familiar. "Kenma?" Kenma looks into Shouyou's eyes for the first time since he entered the lift, and finds that they're showing genuine terror. "When do you think the oxygen in here will run out?"

Kenma opens his mouth and closes it again, feeling nauseous with the pressure of saying the right thing. He's really, _really_ lousy at comforting people, at interacting with people in general, but he knows exactly what Shouyou is feeling and he needs to do something. "There's plenty of oxygen to last a long time," he says quietly. "And lifts aren't airtight."

"Are you sure?" Shouyou asks weakly, his voice shaking as he lets himself slide down the wall and sits down on the floor, hugging his knees. "Because I really don't feel well. I'm...I'm kind of dizzy and I don't think there's enough air...don't you feel it?"

"Shouyou…" Kenma hesitantly crouches down next to the trembling boy. "Shouyou, there's enough air. You're just having a panic attack. Do you use any anxiety medication?" He gestures at Shouyou's sports bag.

Shouyou looks up at him, his brown eyes wide. "What? I….Anxiety?"

Something dawns on Kenma. "You've never had a panic attack before?"

Shouyou shakes his head and opens his bag with shaking hands, pulling out a shirt with which he wipes the sweat off his forehead. "Are you sure we're safe? It's really hot in here, we're…"

"Listen to me, Shouyou," Kenma interrupts him, trying to sound as calm and confident as he can manage. "It only feels like it's hot and there's not enough air because you're panicking, okay? I know what it feels like, and I promise that's what it is."

"Really?"

"Yeah. We're going to be fine." Kenma is vaguely aware that trying to help Shouyou has somehow pushed his social anxiety to the back of his mind, but now is not the time to be surprised at that. "You're actually not struggling to breathe, the problem is that you're overbreathing. Try to take slow, deep breaths."

Shouyou gives a small nod and tries to follow Kenma's instructions. He seems to struggle at first as his breathing is still shaky, but soon it starts to even out and sound a bit more calm. "Good. That's really good, Shouyou. We're going to get out of here soon. We pressed the alarm twice, so they know it wasn't an accident. Even if it somehow didn't go through, it's the middle of the day and someone will notice that the lift isn't working."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right," Shouyou sounds like he's trying to convince himself of something highly improbable, but his voice sounds a little more steady than it did before. He's clearly not going to stop being anxious until they get out of the lift in one piece, but the worst of the panic seems to be under control for now, and Kenma tries to think of a way to distract him so that it doesn't come back. Kenma sucks when it comes to small talk, so conversation isn't going to work. A different idea pops into his head.

"Um…" He opens his backpack, pulls out his 3DS and offers it to Shouyou. "Do you maybe want to play a game? It might help to focus on that." Suddenly he feels like this is the lamest idea he's ever come up with. But Shouyou takes the console without hesitation and smiles gratefully at Kenma.

Kenma watches him play in silence. He doesn't need to have known Shouyou for longer than ten minutes to conclude that it's uncharacteristic for him to be quiet, but he's relieved that he's at least not freaking out anymore, and he realises with mild surprise that the relief isn't entirely selfish. The silence is only interrupted when Shouyou remembers that he's got a half empty water bottle in his bag and haphazardly pulls out all of his stuff until he finds it. He downs the water in big gulps until he remembers Kenma and offers him some. As strangely endearing as it is that Shouyou doesn't seem to have a problem sharing his water bottle with a stranger, Kenma shakes his head.

It takes about twenty minutes for the lift to start moving again. The doors open on the sixth floor and Kenma has never seen anyone gather their things and stuff them into their bag as quickly as Shouyou does before he practically jumps out of the lift. The technician ensures them that everything should function normally now, but Kenma and Shouyou exchange a glance and wordlessly decide that they would rather walk.

"Thanks, Kenma," Shouyou says with a smile when they make it up to the tenth floor. "You're really good at helping people!"

The statement sounds so foreign to Kenma's ears, like Shouyou is talking about someone else, that he spontaneously goes back to looking at his shoes. "It's nothing. And I'm really not."

"Well, I think…" The door next to Kenma's swings open, and a person that perfectly fits Shouyou's description from earlier appears.

"Hinata, dumbass! Why are you so late?"

"I was busy being stuck in a lift, Bakageyama!" Shouyou turns back towards Kenma and grins, as if this is a perfectly normal way of communicating. He waves. "See you, Kenma. Thanks again."

Kenma stares at the angry guy behind Shouyou for a moment, before nodding and quickly making his way into his flat. His roommate doesn't seem to be home yet, so he decides to turn on his PlayStation before Kuroo returns and inevitably wants to use the TV to watch sports or something. While Skyrim loads, Kenma remembers to charge his 3DS, but when he reaches into his backpack it isn't there.

Shit. It must have ended up in Shouyou's bag while they were gathering their stuff.

Kenma's heart races as he stares at the inside of his door, wondering how he's going to pluck up the courage to knock on the angry guy's door and ask for Shouyou. He goes back and forth multiple times between telling himself he can do it and deciding that Shouyou will eventually find it and take it back to Kenma himself before the doorbell rings.

"I'm so sorry!" Shouyou shouts as soon as Kenma opens the door, pushing the console into his hands as if it'll burn him if he holds onto it any longer. "I wasn't trying to steal it or anything! I must have accidentally put it in my bag when I was putting away my stuff because I was still kind of out of it, you know? I'm sorry!"

Kenma can't keep himself from smiling slightly. "It's okay, Shouyou." Maybe it's stupid, but the possibility that he stole it didn't even occur to Kenma.

"Alright, well, I've got to go to practice now! Bye Kenma!" He flashes another wide smile and runs off in the direction of the stairs. Kenma only realises that he's been staring at Shouyou's back once he's disappeared from his field of vision.

It takes until late in the evening, when he folds open his 3DS to play for a bit before going to sleep, for Kenma to notice the piece of paper that falls out from between the two screens. It looks like it was hastily torn from a notebook or something and it's covered with horrible handwriting that gets progressively smaller towards the bottom of the paper.

 _hey kenma! i just wanted to thank you again for what you did because i really don't know what i would have done if i'd been alone and also i didn't want to ask you this in person because you seem kind of shy so i didn't want to pressure you into saying yes in case you'd feel awkward rejecting me in person so feel free to ignore this if you don't want to but you seem really cool and i'd really like to see you again sometime :) if you do too, my number is on the back! - Shouyou_

Kenma crumples up the note and tosses it into the bin. It's not that he doesn't want to, but he's only ever made one friend in his life. He doesn't know how to do this kind of stuff. Shouyou is so vibrant and excitable that it won't take him longer than thirty minutes to get bored of Kenma and realise that he isn't cool at all.

But no matter how many different games he tries to play, Kenma can't focus on any of them because his thoughts keep drifting off to the crumpled up piece of paper at the bottom of the bin. He can't shake the feeling that he's going to regret this. Sure, he's bad with people and he's never felt completely comfortable around anyone apart from Kuroo, but he's also never let his character die twenty times in a row because he couldn't stop thinking about someone's smile.

He fishes the note out of the bin and, with somewhat shaky hands, grabs his phone.

Just a text. He can do one text.


End file.
